


gettin' it right

by Omeganixtra



Series: Destiny Fictober 2019 [19]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fictober 2019, Gen, cayde wants uldren D E A D, grief and revenge, i did not intend for this to turn so dark, reversed Forsaken-situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2021-01-02 13:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omeganixtra/pseuds/Omeganixtra
Summary: "Tell me they lied!" he screams and rushes to the table. "He can't have!"But he has. Uldren has.





	gettin' it right

**Author's Note:**

> day 19: "Yes, I admit it. You were right."

When the Hunter Vanguard comes back, disheveled and torn, it still hasn't set in. Not truly.

Tora bites his lip as he watches Cayde-6's ship make its entrance in the hangar, starting when he feels a heavy hand squeeze his shoulder.

"Nothing's confirmed as of yet," Zalli says tersely, eyes staring straight ahead blankly. "No news is good news."

"Then why did Master Ikora and the Commander call us down?" Tora hisses at him, but lifts a hand of his own anyway to squeeze Zalli's.

The Commander and Ikora are both standing in front of them, faces carefully blank as they give orders to have the hangar cleared of all personnel. The moment that order is given, Tora feels as if ice has just coated the entirety of his insides.

The door opens, dreadfully slow in Tora's humble opinion, and out steps...

Cayde.

Carrying something, no someone, in his arms, and head bowed.

"Cayde?"

Ikora steps forward, a hand raised in question but whatever it is that she sees in her colleague's face has her retract the hand immediately and instead use it to cover her mouth.

"_What happened to her_?" Zalli strides forward, stalwart and positively simmering in fury. "What happened to Meera in that prison?!"

"Uldren."

Cayde's voice is gravelly, as if his vocal units have rusted or broken down. 

He doesn't want to believe it, but even so, Zalli lifts his hand to remove the cloak covering the figure in Cayde's arms.

The noise that leaves him when Meera's face is revealed isn't completely human.

Her face has been cleaned, not a single speck of blood stains her skin, and if it wasn't for the fact that a long scratch is cut into the side of her forehead and down her cheek, her skin pale as snow, then no one would ever have guessed that she no longer lives.

"H-her Ghost?" Tora asks, face white and eyes suspiciously wet.

"Gone. Taken by Uldren."

"How?" he rasps and swallows.

"I don't know."

Tora’s roar of fury echoes in the hangar.

“You should never have let her go with you! You should have let her stay here, you could have _ordered_ her to stay!”

“Yes,” Cayde just stares ahead blankly. “I should have.”

But it doesn’t end there.

Cayde can only stare at the contents of the box that a nearly-dead Corsair brings him.

His mouth-plates open and close as he keeps his optics trained directly on the fragile object in front of him, but not a single sound comes out. Ikora is raging somewhere on his left side, screaming about justice and repaying that bastard Uldren for what he's done.

Everything sounds as if he's been wrapped up in cotton, even the soothing reassurances from Sundance as she carefully nudges at his horn to try and coax some sort of response from him.

Dimly, in the background, he can hear an enraged howl as doors are kicked in and then the room is filled to the brim with Arc energy as Zalli Shornell strides through with a positively thunderous expression on his face.

"Tell me they lied!" he screams and rushes to the table. "_He can't have_!"

But he has.

Uldren has.

There, on the table, surrounded by maps and trinkets and stacks of unfinished reports, lies Meera's Ghost shell. 

It's hollow, empty without the core of the little machine, and therefore nothing but a simple holster painted a bright, fluorescent blue. Scratches coats the entire shell, as if sharp talons [Fallen claws] have teared at it and played around, as if it is nothing more than a fancy toy.

He feels it in his shootin' arm. He feels his Golden Gun. 

Cayde wants to kill.

He hasn't felt like that for quite a while, probably not really since Taniks popped back up from the dead, although Ghaul came very close to making it to that level of annoyance.

Fucker tried to kill his favorite Guardian. He had everything he got coming.

But Uldren... oooh, there is a special sort of Hell for people like Uldren Sov who takes loved ones away like he's brushing off a spec of dirt on his clothes.

Cayde looks up and sees Zalli's back. The Titan is demanding something of Zavala, at least that is what it looks like, but he can't hear the words. Everything still rings.

Optics lock onto his Ace and fingers brush the hilt of the hand cannon almost lovingly. He can almost hear Meera's voice over his shoulder, asking him to join her on the shooting range and defend that title of best shot 'round the Tower that he's still sitting on.

"Cayde?"

It's Ikora's voice that breaks the ringing silence around him.

"Ikora."

"Don't do this, Cayde, not you," she pleads.

He blinks at her, momentarily confused. The time for pleading is long gone. Uldren's seen to that now when he's sent back the wrecked, hollow shell of a Ghost that Cayde has learnt to love almost as much as his own Sundance.

"He did this, Ikora. He took her from me."

"Sov has taken from everyone," she tries to reason with him, and oh, but Cayde could laugh as he listens to her pitiful attempts at convincing him. “But that doesn’t have to mean that you can stoop down to his level, Cayde!”

"I have to."

"No," she shakes her head, walks around the table and takes the hand wrapping around the Ace in-between hers. "Cayde, you are more than this. You are _better_."

"I'm really not," he shakes his head. Closes his eyes. "Ikora—"

"No." Ikora's eyes grows wet. "You cannot do this. If you—if you do this, there is no coming back."

"I owe her a debt," he rasps. "She wasn't meant to die there in that prison, alone and scared."

"It’s been _weeks_, Cayde. Uldren is long gone and there is no telling from where that Corsair came!"

"I'll find out. I—I'll contact—"

"You won't have to do anything."

Cayde turns cautiously, but the only one standing behind him is Zalli.

His eyes are circled with red, but he looks as determined as ever. The tears running down his cheeks are evaporated by the Arc that circulates his body. Cayde ignores how it’s making some of his inner-machinery act up.

"Shornell?"

"Tora and I'll track down where it came from. You get us to that location through whatever means you can without anyone knowing, and we won't even have to alarm the fucker we're coming."

"To do so would declare war on the Reach,” Ikora shakes her head.

"If a Vanguard, or representative of Earth commits a crime against the Sov dynasty, yes," Zalli agrees with Ikora. "But right now we are not representatives of Earth. Or Vanguards."

"Cayde has a responsi—"

"Cayde is quite tired of people speaking as if he us not right in front of them," Cayde cuts in and Ikora at the very least has the tact to look abashed.

“We leave in ten.”

Tora nods and is out the doorway in seconds.

“You are making a mistake,” Ikora shakes her head and looks pointedly down onto the reports scattered on their table. “This is a _mistake_.”

“Yes, I admit it,” he acknowledges. “You were right.”

“Were?”

“You were right the first time that you said it, and you were right the second time. But damn what is right and what ain’t. I want blood, and there ain’t a single fucking thing or person here that can stop me!”

He walks away.

Ikora’s voice screeches in his ears and Zavala’s makes the ground beneath him shake, but Cayde marches on.

He has a prince to Hunt.


End file.
